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Saturday, August 27, 2016

I just finished up this piece. It was created in ArtRage4 and edited in Photoshop. I've always had a fascination with the mountains and wanted to paint one but I also wanted to make something that resides in Tolkien's world. Meld the two together and voila! Caradhras, one of the mightiest peaks in the Misty Mountains!

ArtRage is a really neat program, the digital oil's really flows like real life oils, they blend and meld together to create all kinds of unexpected colors and they leave these wonderful brush strokes that give the painting some depth. All of the mountain and foreground were done in digital oils, the sky was done in digital watercolor. If you look close on the left hand side you can see a Ranger and a small Hobbit admiring the view.

Unfortunatly the final image is very small, only 6x5 inches at 150dpi. I started drawing this in ArtRage on my iPad and was not aware that the resolution was so small. Once I transfered over to my full blown PC I become aware that it was such a low resolution. Well live and learn, I won't make that mistake again!

Thursday, August 25, 2016

I'm back with a review of another The One Ring RPG product; The Darkening of Mirkwood campaign. Lets start off by saying this is another wonderful TOR accessory. It's a hard cover, full color campaign that clocks in at 142 pages long. This book has enough material in it to keep your fellowship playing for months if not years depending on how frequently you get to play! More after the break!

Thursday, August 18, 2016

The Heart of the Wild is a resource book for The One Ring Roleplaying game that focuses on the Vales of the Anduin to the west of Mirkwood and also Mirkwood itself. The One Ring has been releasing a series of resource books that cover different parts of Middle-Earth followed up by an adventure book that focuses on that same area. The Darkening of Mirkwood is the adventure book that coincides with this book. I'll cover The Darkening of Mirkwood in a separate review later on.

The Heart of the Wild is a hardcover color book that's 128 pages long. The cover was done by Jon Hodgson and shows Radagast the Brown facing off against the Children of Shelob. This is another beautiful book by Cubicle7 in the same style as the core rule-book. The three main chapters are; The Lands of the River, The Greatest of Forests and Monsters of the Wild. More after the break!

Monday, August 15, 2016

Today I will be walking you through the process of creating a new character in The One Ring RPG. I've decided to make one of the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and I think I am going to make him a Treasure-hunter. First lets start off with a name, each of the cultures in The One Ring comes with a list of names appropriate to that culture. I think we'll go with Nár Goldflame. Being one of the Dwarves of the Lonely mountain his standard of living is considered Rich, all that dragon-gold enables him a comfortable lifestyle! Bling, bling! More after the break....

Friday, August 12, 2016

I'll start this review by stating the following: I am a huge fan of Tolkien's work. I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy many, many times (and am currently in the middle of Return of the King again). There have been a number of RPG projects involving his work over the years, the biggest being Middle Earth Role Playing or MERP. I loved that game mightily. To be able to play as a Rider of Rohan or one of the Dunedain was just an awesome experience. Tolkien's work is what inspired me to start role-playing in the first place and I suspect this is the same with many other young people who have encountered his books.

While MERP provided a way to play in Tolkien's world it never really felt connected to his work. To me the magic system was too much and the magic items felt to plentiful and common. The supplement books contained a wealth of information and are wonderful to read even for people that are not interested in role-playing but just in Tolkien's world. It was a very robust system that was well supported, books for it were published from the early 1980's though the late 1990's. My friends and I spent many hours thwarting the enemies of the Free Peoples.

After death of of MERP came Decipher's The Lord of the Rings RPG, It was published in 2002 and was abandoned in 2006. I cannot comment on this game as I never played it but it does not seem to have ever achieved the same level of success as MERP. More after the break!

Monday, August 8, 2016

Its been a little while since I've been around these parts, but as the title explains, I'm back! Well as much as I can be with a six week old baby. On 06/27/2016 Amelia Jieun Carter was born, she was a healthy 8lbs 11oz and is growing like crazy! My wife an I feel very blessed, everyone is healthy and doing well.

Needless to say that this new little one leaves me with very little free time, so this blog dropped down the totem pole of things to keep up on. I have no intention of abandoning this blog though, I still enjoy hopping on here and talking all things gaming. I will be posting a review soon, I have recently been enamored with The One Ring RPG and I will be doing a review of it and several of the expansion books. I am also still working on a few new artist interviews, keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best!

I hope you all are well. Stay tuned, more to come in the next few days!